I attempted to post a more detailed description of a proposal to create a Public Domain Foundation, but it seems to have been lost during the preview process. I propose this in hopes that contact made with offerings of legal assistance from Universities, private attorneys and the like will include a request that they might, in consort, consider the formation of such a foundation. In more succinct form, here is what I proposed:

1 The creation of a Public Domain Foundation ('PDF') for the following purposes:

- To answer any and all legal and commercial challenges that threaten the existence or operation of legitimate public domain services such as IMSLP, regardless of their form or type of offering (music, literature, art, etc.)

- To advocate on behalf of free public domain preservation and distribution efforts in local, national and global venues.

- To raise funds both for their own operations and to make small grants available to efforts such as IMSLP with might otherwise not succeed in their mission of distributing public domain materials free to the common ownership of all the people. This will also relieve such efforts of the need to deal with the complexities of finance and vulnerabilites of handling monies which can only distract from their primary missions.

- To block attempts at commercial encroachment on the right of the people to freely own, distribute and otherwise employ public domain materials.

- To challenge attempts to redefine the meanings and scope of 'public domain' in ways that either narrow its free public availability or, permit commercial advantage in the managment of those materials.

- To educate the public in the value and importance of their intellectual and cultural heritage and the need to defend it as public domain property on behalf present and future generations.

- To advise efforts such as IMSLP on various matters concerning the handling, selection and distribution of public domain artifacts.

- To answer attempts to intimidate or otherwise limit public domain archives and distributions with competent legal challenges and to constrain the current free-reign of corporate enterprise to bully efforts to preserve and distribute public domain materials into submission or closure.

- to serve as a repository for copies of files and databases maintained by public-domain offerers; thus protecting such materials from unwarrented seizure or destruction. It is one thing for a corporate bully to send a 'Cease and Desist' letter to some hapless, harried and legally untrained individual; quite another to have to confront a well-trained and very competent legal staff with the same threats and bogus assaults.

- In General, a PDF would work to protect and expand the definitions of "Public Domain" in ways serve the public and their right to full possession of materials left to their keeping as a legacy for all to use and freely enjoy. This, for ours and future generations.

That is the general idea. A lot of fine tuning is needed; but I believe it would be a far better way to approach the matter than leaving such events for individual site owners and others engaged in public domain distributions to have to contend with. Few, if any, have the resource, expertise or energy to survive such assaults, as we can see. It is only corporate and commercial interests which benefit if we deal with such matters on a site-by-site, piece-by-piece fashion. That's a divide and conquer strategy which we are sure to lose.

best to all,

Redslider

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In a world where so many have abdicated
all sense of sanity and reality, it is to the arts
that we must depend upon its safe-keeping until their return.

Hi..
Summarising there are 3 possibilities:
1 To close all
2 To continue with restricting rules (life + 70)
3 To continue in the same way

I think the first must be the last thing to do and I hope you do not choose this option.

The second option seem to be the most reasonable in the meantime.

The third , also if more rigth than others, can be realised in a second time.
That is, only if we find support from an university library,an association,or a pubblic library,whatever has a legal support to face issues.

About Pubblic Domain Foundation:
If we create a foundation we will have the same problem that is:
Who pay legal assistence?We need money .
Where do we find money to do a thing like that?
The problem is that law should be respected and expecially if we are in the right side , we shouldn't spend millions to have our rigths preserved .

I am entirely sympathetic with your concerns. It is indeed an outrage that we are being virtually blackmailed into fighting these bogus claims by would-be inheritors of the public domain; either that, or face extinction. Unfortunately, that's the way the game works; that's the way the world is. As such, permit me to respond to some of your apprehensions:

The idea of a Public Domain Foundation (PDF) is precisely to answer the question, "Who will pay for protecting our rightful heritage?" Yes, it costs a lot of money to mount a good defense, a heck of a lot of money, effort and time. However, if you noticed, Feldmahler and others have indicated that university legal staffs and others have come forward to offer (some of it, pro-bono) their assistance in this matter. If we use those offers on a one-shot, one-time effort to save just the IMSLP site, then the resource will simply be used and lost. Other attacks by other challengers will need to mount whole new efforts each time, starting from scratch. That will really be a very doubtful proposition. If, however, a permanent foundation is created to manage these matters, secure willing counsel, raise money and perform other tasks over a range of public domain sites and issues, then it may be possible to present far more effective challenge to encroachment and long-term protection across the spectrum of public domain issues.

We cannot afford such structures by ourselves. But, taken together, under a single umbrella organzation, the PDF itself may be able to raise such funds, obtain both paid and volunteer resources, gather expertise, cast a watchful eye and stand as our advocate in the battle to keep the public domain both open and free. That's what such organizations do best and I would leave it to competent attorneys and other experts in organization to figure out how that might be done. It remains our best chance; for this effort and for future efforts.

As you can see, from things like Microsoft's effort to buy out the right to present images of the world's great art to RIAA's attacks on music downloaders, "jumping the obstacles" or "going around" them, is at best a very temporary measure. The forces that would bully this site into non-existence will come back again and again unless we push back on a level playing field and on equal terms. That's just the way it works and fairness or even right and justice rarely have anything to do with the matter. As you infer, what is "right" is often defined by those with the power (ie. money) to assert definitions that advance their own agenda.

So, that is why I suggest that Feldmahler and others involved at least press the suggestion that we need to create a PDF or something like it to manage these matters in a united and concerted way. EFF did it for privacy and public rights for internet users. Why shouldn't a PDF do it for the preservation and distribution of our own cultural artifacts?

Just read your this thread where several important points are raised. First of all, I do not exactly understand what is needed at this point. Is it money? Lawyers? Another location for the site? Wouldn't it be better to decide the next step and what parts that need to be solved to achieve that? It would definitely be easier to offer you the help which I wish to do.

First, I thought it was a problem to host it at the University and that the head of it forced you Feldmahler to close the site. But then I read that you even had at least some resources helping you.

Having by now also read the Cease and Desist letter, I see little to worry about. What they actually ask you to do is to remove the scores with composers who died from 1937 and forward plus possible a couple of other composers who's work are still under UE's protection. By doing so, you show your good intentions which probably have UE remove their claim. However, if it is still your intention to keep the level of 50 years copyright free to the entire world, you will have a problem. Installing IP filtering protection will partly help but I imagine this will be difficult to maintain.

To ease the situation for you personally, you could move the ownership of the site to a "void" organization. Or let it float around between several groups and people. That would make it extremely tricky for UE to continue their claim.

As I said earlier and in an email to you, I could arrange the hosting in EU but that will definitely make it a 70 years rule site. At least, that would make 99% of the site operable again.
Another possibility (which does not conflict with the first) is to let a larger organization sit on the top and run possible further legal processes for you. I could possibly arrange that too as I am a member of an umbrella organization which also hosts PianoSociety (where I am the owner).

The real problem are the composers, who died before 1937 and are still under copyright by UE oder another publisher. Who knows all the names of these composers? Could be, that in 2 or 3 months the next publisher will send Feldmahler the next letter about such a "unkkown" composer.

I think the UE really wants to clear all the UE files. I bought the "4 Stuecke fuer Klarinette und Klavier" (4 pieces for clarinet and piano) by Alban Berg for about 3 Monthts at a local dealer. This costs 16 Euros (thats 23 US-$). On the IMSLP was this file for free, cause of the composers early death! The other argumentation is in my opinion is pleaded.

These numbers reflect the most recent extensions of copyright in the United States and Europe. Canada and New Zealand have not, as of 2006, passed similar twenty-year extensions. Consequently, their copyright expiry times are still life of the author plus 50 years. Australia passed a 20-year copyright extension in 2004, but delayed its effect until 2005, and did not make it revive already-expired copyrights. Hence, in Australia works by authors who died before 1955 are still in the public domain.

As a result, works ranging from Peter Pan to the stories of H. P. Lovecraft are public domain in both countries. (The copyright status of Lovecraft's work is debatable, as no copyright renewals, which were necessary under the laws of that time, have been found. Also, two competing parties have independently claimed copyright ownership on his work.)

As with most other Commonwealth of Nations countries, Canada and Australia follow the general lead of the United Kingdom on copyright of government works. Both have a version of Crown Copyright which lasts for 50 years from publication. New Zealand also has Crown Copyright, but has a much greater time length, at 100 years from the date of publication. India has a government copyright of sixty years from publication, to coincide with its somewhat unusual life of the author plus sixty years term of copyright.

Due to this, it would be possible to host IMSLP in Australia am I right? If that is the case, I will consider asking and talking around here, as well as approaching Universities, and libraries, etc.

Questions about how to proceed pose legal complexities which I don't think most of us are prepared to address. In the first place, do EU regulations even apply to content on a U.S. ISP? If someone in some remote kingdom decides that copyrights are to be extended indefinitely, does that mean every ISP in the world must obey their rules? Or, does it fall on the countries in question to regulate what their own citizens may or may not download? Regulating content on the internet is an area frought with difficulty. Even acceeding to the demands of some complaining entity may invite further incursions into the free exercise of distributing public domain materials.

All of this is better left to organizations and structures which can operate on behalf of sites such as IMSLP with the expertise and resources needed to address such issues. This is why I've suggested creating such an organization for the benefit of all and, taking the matter off the shoulders of ISPs and their contributors whose real job is to distribute such material as widely as possible, not to split legal hairs with every corporation that desires to control the market and eliminate all consumer alternatives besides themselves.

Robert, it's not as simple as you think. I think IMSLP went to hibernation mode (as I would like to call it) because the site administrators think that this is not just about the composers UE demand to be removed from IMSLP. It is just the tip of the iceberg. By launching a C & D letter, UE has set a precedent for other music publishing companies who may double-team and launch another attack on IMSLP should they wish. I personally think (administrators please correct me if I'm wrong) that the site admins took it down to protect it, rather like cloaking it from the radars that are UE and other scumbugs prowling the Internet.

There is a lot of publicity about IMSLP all around the world now. I think many people are curious and will click on imslp.org the first time. Is it therefore not a good idea to reopen the site with all its functionalities, but without the possibilities for uploading and downloading? On the mainpage one can explain as a major hint, that uploading and downloading was stopped because of the intervention of UE until the copyright problems are solved. For all those, who know the site yet, it is encouraging to see that it is not dead, but only sleeping.

The order was to cease and desist from allowing EU citizens from gaining access to EU(c) files. The IP ban does that, and I'd find it difficult to comprehend them suing for that, for example: if a hacker hacked into Google, and stole scanned copies of the copyright books in there book search, should Google be taken to court for not making it's security strong enough for a geek with too much time on his hands to get in? A line has to be drawn somewhere, and IP banning a continent should be the the line.